Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald comments on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's most recent comments on Islam:
"I think Islam, the Muslim world, is indeed going through an evolution, and as with any evolution there are both potential negative outcomes and potential positive outcomes. The negative outcome would be the continued rise of extremism and those who would hijack the great world religion to a cause that clearly has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a peaceful religion..."In order to make this statement, Condoleeza Rice either 1) would have to have studied Islam -- not for years, not even for months, but a solid week would do; or 2) rely on staff members to supply her with accurate summaries of the belief-system of Islam, which would necessarily have to get beyond the "one of the world's great monotheisms," "one of the abrahamic faiths," "the Five Pillars of Islam are shahada, zakat, salat, Ramadan, and hajj."
It is very likely #2 and not #1. But probably those staff members are not deeply versed in the geopolitics of Islam and have not spent a long time reading and re-reading and thinking about the history of Islamic conquest, or about the immutability of Islamic texts, or the way in which those texts are now distributed far and wide, or the use of Islam as a Total Explanation of the Universe — a point of repair and solace that, alas, also provides a ready-made object of blame in the Infidel. Nor have they likely thought about the ways in which, far beyond terrorism, and far more effectively than terrorism, Islam can be promoted and spread.
If Condoleeza Rice really believes that Islam "is a peaceful religion" then she has not read the history of Islamic conquest, has not studied the treatment of non-Muslims -- all non-Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists -- living in lands subjugated by Muslims, and has failed to fully grasp the nature of that supposedly benign "protected-people" status of Christians and Jews that, in the full panoply of what it demanded of those "People of the Book" (ahl al-kitab) was onerous, and relentlessly cruel in a way that rhetoric should not be allowed to conceal.
If she meant the quoted remarks, then she is a grave disappointment. And neither she, nor anyone else who thinks in the same vein, is likely to be able to comprehend how much vaster is the problem than anything bringing "democracy to Iraq" will solve.
Let us stick only to Turkey, since Rice raises it as an example. Indeed, Turkey is an example. But of what? The historical record shows the following:
1) Kemal Ataturk was a war hero and strongman who took full control of Turkey -- which was not a democracy at the time -- in order to save his country from what he regarded as further disaster and possible dismemberment (it had already lost its possessions) in 1924.
He instituted a series of measures designed to limit the power of Islam in political and social matters. These included:
a) the Hat Act. This abolished the wearing of the brimless fez which made praying easier and insisted on Western caps to go with such Western, non-Islamic dress as coats and ties.
b) giving women the right to vote.
c) having the Qur'an translated into Turkish -- to break the cultural hold of Arabic -- and even supplying a special tafsir, or commentary in Turkish.
d) ending the use of Arabic script and adopting the Western alphabet.
e) monitoring the mosques and creating a Ministry of Religions Affairs entrusted with composing the khutbas delivered at Friday Prayers -- carefuly vetted by government officials so that they would not contain any dangerous material.
f) forbidding conscripts in the army from rising in the ranks if they demonstrated any detectable signs of religious fervor, such as reading the Qur'an too much.
g) forbidding the wearing of the hijab in any government office or at any official function.
h) cracking down on any newspapers that offered articles deemed "pro-Islamic."
i) making the army the bastion and protector of Kemalism.
And much more.
Note that Ataturk did not try to change the text of Qur'an. Nor did he try to revise Bukhari or Muslim, or to de-authenticate dangerous ahadith. Nor did he try to re-write the life of Muhammad. (In some ways the cult of Ataturk, now the national cult of Turkey, was a kind of replacement for Muhammad.) He realized that this was impossible, but that in order to bring Turkey kicking and screaming into the modern world (Turkey was poor, Turkey was on the ropes, Turkey needed a Strong Man and as a war hero he fit the bill perfectly), he and those who supported him had to force through all these constraints on Islam.
Ataturk was the most successful example of the quasi-enlightened despots who alone have been responsible for whatever constraints on Islam have been put in place in the Islamic world. In Iran, the Shah tried to emphasis the pre-Islamic origins of the Iranian state, just as his regime had tried to avoid mistreating non-Muslims -- in defiance of the laws of sharia and the particular fanaticism with which the Infidels were regarded as "unclean" or "najis." The Shah’s was an uphill battle: even into the 1970s Mary Boyce found Zoroastrians treated as "unclean." Laurence Loeb, who spent a year living in Iran, noted that Jews could still be beaten to death for going out in the rain (it was believed that rainwater, if it touched a Jew's skin, and then subsequently splashed onto a Muslim, could endanger that Muslim with this drop or two of horrific uncleanliness). Then there was Mohammed V of Morocco, who was protected from Islamic attack as a sherifian monarch (i.e., direct descendant of the Prophet). There was Bourguiba of Tunisia and his One-Party (Destour) Rule that still, through a police-state, has managed to limit the Islam-based mistreatment of women, and even allows some space to very guarded and gentle, but nonetheless noticeable, criticism of Islamic practices, if not untouchable and immutable doctrines.The entire history of Islam shows that while the doctrines cannot be changed, a strong man, by dint of relentless pressure, can work to constrain Islam.
2) Turkey offers another lesson, one that Rice and others who will be around after Rice is gone should think about: Kemalism requires constant vigilance for it to be maintained. Even though a secular class has been created in Turkey, that class has been insufficiently aware of how tenuous its position is, and of how it is constantly in danger of being chipped away at, and undermined, by the determined "Islamic" element in Turkey. Erdogan is not an example of someone admirable, but of someone exceedingly cunning. He is able to use the E.U.'s requirements to hobble the army, the sole guarantor of Kemalism
The undermining of Kemalism in Turkey offers a salutary lesson: that Islam is a powerful force, and cannot be changed, only constrained, as Kemal Ataturk did. And to the degree that any country becomes more Muslim, to that same degree that country will -- no matter how long or close its seemingly heartfelt alliance with the United States has been -- pull away from that alliance, forget all that was done for it, and become hostile to the United States, as it would be to any Infidel power practicing muscular self-defense. The same is true of Pakistan, which has received every possible aid over decades, just as Turkey as. Neither country can be trusted to be on America's side, no matter how plausible some Turkish generals in Ankara may seem (or may be) to their American counterparts, or how many ramrod-straight Sandhurst graduates in Karachi manage to impress, or at least try to make us overlook, how Pakistani generals were in up their neck in supporting the Taliban and the extracurricular activities of that remarkable man, A. Q. Khan.
3) The example of Turkey shows that Islam can only be constrained by a strong man rather than by "democracy" -- for a "democratic" state where the people are almost entirely Muslim will inevitably redefine everything in terms of Islam. Whatever is bad -- i.e., corruption -- will simply be defined as "Infidel" and therefore to be opposed. Whatever is desirable will simply be labeled in the spirit of Islam -- and this will happen everywhere that head-counting is the accepted definition of democracy, and not head-counting plus the rights enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The government needs desperately a cadre of people who are willing to study what the defectors from Islam can tell us -- such people as Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, and hundreds or thousands of others. It needs people who can see right through Esposito and his ilk, and who will learn about Islam by going to the dozens of Western scholars whose work has been deliberately ignored. They should begin with the pioneering scholarship (and synthesis of others' scholarship) by Bat Ye'or, and such books as Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim," and then go back to study Joseph Schacht, Arthur Jeffery, C. Snouck Hurgronje, Antoine Fattal, Edmond Fagnan, Vryonis and Vakalopoulos and Dadrian and Ivo Andric and a dozen others on non-Muslims under Ottoman rule, and K. S. Lal and Sarkar on Hindus under Muslim rule, and Mary Boyce on Zoroastrians in Muslim Persia, and many others now in the process of being published within the next six months.
She has been misled. That is not her fault. Many people have been misled about Islam. But at some point they must begin to realize that the evidence of their senses suggests that they have fed an incorrect analysis, a "theory" or "model" of Islam that does not explain all the data we have collected over 1350 years, nor seems to have much explanatory value for what is happening now, not only in Iraq and with Israel, but in the Sudan, in Nigeria, in Pakistan, in the Philippines, in Indonesia, in Bangladesh -- where Christians, Jews, Hindus, Confucians, Buddhists all suffer from Muslim persecution or Jihad.
At this point anyone who speaks of Islam as a "religion of peace," when a good many Americans (and others in the Western world) have figured out that they must learn about Islam on their own, since those whose solemn duty it is to instruct them instead offer only pieties and bromides, invites ridicule. And that ridicule will come also from the soldiers who have been to Iraq and have seen Islam from up close, and who, despite the propaganda they are forced to parrot from time to time, have a better sense of the rumors and lies and nonsense that are the daily stuff of life in Arab Islam, and furthermore have been fully aware of the widespread hostility, rooted in Islamic doctrine, even to Infidels bearing gifts costing tens of billions of dollars.
Perhaps the entire political class in this country is guilty -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- of failing to learn about Islam, and failing to offer imaginative and intelligent means to resist it. These means do not require vast invasion forces on the ground. Nor do they require the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and tens of billions more, apparently, in Afghanistan -- not to mention the continuation of American aid, for no good reason, to Egypt, to Jordan, to Pakistan, and of course to the shock-troops of the relentless and essentially endless Arab Jihad against Israel, the local Arabs renamed the "Palestinian people."
We can deplore the 5th graders, and the 8th graders, and the 12th graders who do not know history. Editorialists rightly wring their hands at those in colleges who haven't a clue as to why 1803 was important in American history, or 1649 in English history, or 1453 in the history of Western Christendom. But when it comes to those who create policies that will determine the safety and wellbeing of the entire Western, world, but who have failed to study the history of Jihad-conquest, or the dhimmitude that was the most gentle fate for those non-Muslims who were subjugated, this kind of ignorance has real consequences, real costs, and real dangers.
The only antidote is to become rooted in a real knowledge, unfoolable and unflappable, not only of Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, but of how those canonical texts are used and of how they have served to fashion the Sharia -- and of how, in the 1350 years of Islamic history, there has been an observable and remarkable consistency in how Muslims from Spain to the East Indies have behaved, prompted by the same texts, toward non-Muslims.
One would love to know what Condoleeza Rice knows, or has been told (and by whom) about Islam. Does the Treaty of al-Hudaibyiia mean anything to her? Does the description of Muhammad in the Qur'an as "uswa hasana"? Does she know what Khomeini, that learned Shi'a theologian, wrote, or why he reduced the marriageable age of girls to nine years? Does she think that the problem with Islam is a "handful of extremists"? If so, why does she believe that? Or does she believe the problem is those "Wahhabi" Muslims? If so, what does she make of the behavior of Muslims toward non-Muslims in the thousand years before Wahhabism appeared? What does she know about the 60-70 million Hindus who were massacred under Mughal rule? What does she know about the Bumiputra system in present-day Malaysia, and why it has been called a disguised jizyah? What does she know about the treatment of Christians under Ottoman rule in the Balkans and elsewhere in eastern Europe? What does she know about the real treatment of Christians and Jews in Andalucia? Does she know why so many have taken to mocking the "myth of Andalucia" created by such writers as Chateaubriand and Irving? What does she know about demographic trends in Europe? About Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali? What does she know about those religiously-sanctioned doctrines in Islam, of dissimulation about the faith of Islam and about the Believer's own beliefs, variously known as "taqiyya" and "kitman"?
These are some of the questions, the answers to which might enlighten us, and make us feel less insecure and alarmed -- or more so.
Never before have we needed leaders willing to take the time to study, to return to their books, to be willing to jettison prefabricated phrases about "tolerance" and "peace" and to be willing to understand some very unpleasant truths. Never before have we so needed those who can calmly prepare, little by little, both other policymakers, and the still in-the-dark public, for what must be understood.
It is not asking too much of our leaders to ask them not to dismiss the dangers of Islam, and to request that they study not the apologists but the real scholars (a book or article on Islam written in 1920 or 1930 does not lose value, and because it was written at a time of much less inhibition, in a less guarded and fearful language, it is likely to be of far greater value than what is written today -- even if what is written today is by someone who is not an apologist, as so many non-Muslim scholars are if they want to succeed in academic life and need to be wary of offending Muslim colleagues, or potential or actual Arab or other Muslim donors).
Fais un petit effort. Intelligence and imagination will allow you to come up, very easily, with a dozen ideas that will help to weaken Islam, to exploit its natural fissures, to visibly limit its present and future economic power, and to support, within Europe, those who are now thoroughly alarmed and intent on stopping the spread of a belief-system that is totalitarian in its Total Regulation and Total Explanation of the Universe.
Surely that is something that can be understood by some in the army and in the civilian administration -- and can percolate not downwards, but upwards -- from those who still have the time to do their own studying, and do not have to rely on 2-5 page summaries prepared by aids.
Long live the colonels who educate the generals. Long live the staff aides who educate the Senators and Congressmen And long live all those who take the time to read, study, and think.
It is they who will rescue us.
Ataturk is on the way out. Islam is on the way in. Another 5 years and Turkey will be an 'Islamic Republic'- That is why they should never be considered to join the EC.
Free Northern Cyprus: Drive the Turks into the sea!
They still make no attempt to recognize the Armenian genocide of 1.5 million Christians 1915, all they ever do is make demands & demands. Germany is full of Turkish agents and they even sit in parliament. Some of them represent the pathetic green party, but most of all they speak for Turks and Turkey.
They are agents of a foreign nation and European Dhimmis just don't want to see it, just like Condi!
She certainly is not a 'Lady of the world'- and I'd rather see a more qualified person in her position. But look at her boss, did he bother to read the Qu'ran, hadiths, sira or what Islam is all about? This oil slicker from Texas knows about business and he is his fathers son. Father Bush was also never more than a sucker for the Saudis...
A staff is only as good as its leader. One hopes that the leader is not possessed of the kind of arrogance that prevents from accepting and correcting personal mistakes. We need these in the government for our salvation.
Come on you guys, these people simply do not believe in objective reality. They believe they can make reality become whatever they say it is.
They know that humans are easily conned and manipulated(they've been doing it for years, it's how they maintain elitist control) and can be led to believe damn-near anything. Lenin, Hitler, and Goebels and many before and after(including mohammed) capitalised on human weaknesses and succeeded in getting large numbers of people to believe in their dogma.
All it takes is to apply known psychological/behavioral principles in a controlled environment and viola!, "1984" becomes reality. The internet throws a wrench in their gears because it is (mostly)unregulated information, and you can be sure they are brainstorming on how to gain control of it in a seemingly benevolent manner.
The Leftists and Pragmatists share much in common and in fact are sometimes indistinguishable. But their main concern is to maintain the rule of the power-elite class over lesser humanity. Supposed oppositional forces are for the most part internal power-struggles and disagreement on means and methods, not ultimate goals.
Miss/Ms. Rice is a liar and a con-artist, they all are. They are pursuing Pragmatic Utopia, Utopia defined as maintainance and protection of the elite and the willing subservience of the rest of humanity.
Oh, they may have good intentions, but that matters not. They have positioned themselves to be gods on earth, and the elimination of true freedom is the result. And they will sacrifice many in their quest.
In order to make this statement, Condoleeza Rice either 1) would have to have studied Islam -- not for years, not even for months, but a solid week would do; or 2) rely on staff members to supply her with accurate summaries of the belief-system of Islam,
...or 3) she is a dhimmi and doesn't mind the stinking stench of burnt flesh rising up from her nice bonus checks from a certain oil-producing nation north of Yemen?
Is it possible? Shouldn't this article have been posted over at Dhimmiwatch?
Yes, Condi... Islam is a religion of peace. Why don't you go to an Islamic nation and be a lesbian or an in-charge women there? And after the policemen show up and soddomize you with a truncheon rolled in red pepper, after they have ripped all of your hair out (and I mean ALL,) as the mob drags you to the stoning field, remind them that Islam is a religion of peace.
You are about as able to deal with Islam as Edith Bunker.
McCarthy ran into similar inexplicable goings-ons while he was investigating communist subversion at the start of the cold-war. What he seems to have had a hard time determining was why people in high places who were not actual communists would by their policies actually further the communist agenda.
The answer is Pragmatism I think. The communists were about the "intellectual" elite running things, but the Pragmatists were predominantly Corporate elites. They were/are just two sides of the same coin, and can and do move back and forth between the two "neighborhoods".
The main function was to ensure elitist superiority. McCarthy was far from the only one who had been making noise about these things, but in the end the elite maintained over-all control, the real question was which elitist faction would dominate.
Focusing purely on the evils of leftism distracts from the big-picture, and gives the other side of the coin a free pass. Both sides want the subjugation of the people. They only disagree on how and who will administer it. The left-right fight is very useful to them because it fosters the illusion of choice and traps people into being slaves of ideology, which precludes self-examination.
"America's Retreat from Victory", by Senator Joseph McCarthy:
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/victory.html
The invocation of the late, completely unlamented Senator Joseph McCarthy, and further mention of a supposed conspiracy of "elites" strike one as strange.
There is no conspiracy, conscious or unconcscious. There is human weakness. There is greed, and a small army of direct or indirect hirelings of Saudis and other Arabs, found among ex-diplomats, ex-intelligence agents, journalists, and assorted academics including those who head "Centers" for thisandthat having to do with Islam. Some of these hirelings, over the past few deaces, have been posing as disinterested (as opposed to those they are bravely standing against in the mighty "pro-Isarel lobby") dispensers of policy wisdom, or in their newest incarnation, as avoiding-clash-of-civilisatons theorists. (Alastair Crooke is merely the latest version of the previous "wisdom" dispensed by "international business consultant" Raymond Close). There is laziness -- who wants to actualy study Islam, even for a week or two? There is stupidity. There is refusal to comprehend. There is the denial of the obvious. There is the belief that we cannot, forthrightly, tell the truth about Islam, for fear of offending too many. Offending whom? And how? By suggesting that there are passages in the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira which, if taken seriously, might lead to rather bad things to happen to good (and not-so-good) Infidels? And what exactly could happen that is not already happening? Would Muslim states to show their anger stop receiving Infidel foreign aid? If so, good -- they should long ago have stopped receiving that aid. Will they stop selling the oil that is virtually their only source of revenue? No, of course not, but the more we realize that we have failed to internalize the real cost of that oil, and are forced to understand that the revenues are used to spread Islam and hence to undermine the civilization, the mores and manners, of our own, Infidel world. And if we care about that world (many don't) then we should work to diminish that "wealth" weapon which is also used in a way to fly under the obvious radar -- a "Stealth Wealth Weapon" that funds mosques and madrasas, and buys up agents, world-wide.
Failure of imagination and intelligence leads to the uttering of untruths. There are many ways to phrase the same thing. Again and again it has been suggested here that, by degrees, the truth may be asymptotically approached.
If "Islam" must remain, for now, beyond critical scrutiny, then leaders should speak of "Jihad" and "jihadists." Drop by steady drop, they should begin to wonder aloud -- ask aloud -- about the precise role of Jihad as the means to spread Islam. They should let leak stories about how they are beginning to question the efficacy of the strategy of bringing "democracy" when the problem, for the Infidel world, was never the absence of democracy in the first place, but rather the presence of Islam.
Then begin to have stories appear about American (and European) worry over demographic changes, and what that might mean for the future of non-Muslims. Start to talk about the historical record. Do not parrot Menocal-Armstrong nonsense about the wonders of Andalucia. Do not permit the Espositos of this world to any longer be welcome outside the forums sponsored by www.islamonline.net. Do link the need to construct a crash program for diminishing reliance on fossil fuels, above all on oil, unashamedly to the need to diminish as well the "money that funds the world-wide Jihad, in all of its manifestations."
This is not beyond possiblity. It does not require attacking all of Islam. It does require some understanding of what the theory and practice of Islam is all about.
As for Joseph McCarthy, he offers no lessons, to anybody, about anything. He was a demagogue of the usual sort that is always thrown up, and he helped prolong, unfortunately, whatever foolish residual anti-anti-Communist beliefs existed during his heyday. With him out of the picture, things became much clearer.
It is the same, in Europe, with such local demagogues as Le Pen. With le Pen out of the picture, the threat of Islam to France would be much clearer, and many who still refuse to see what is staring them in the face would suddenly see it.
As for the idea of a conspiracy of elites, mentio of which in a posting above provoked, in turn, this posting, would it not be fairer to say that a great many people who rule over us share the same stupidities, mouth the same cliches, receive the same benefits from Arab oil sources, and are lazy, unintelligent, and unimaginative in the same or slightly different ways. The only difference is that they are supposed to meet the responsibilities of rule, and to use their enormous resources, and staffs, wisely in order to learn about new threats, or rather old threats that, for a time, when for a few centuries Muslims lacked the wherewithal, seemed -- but only seemed -- to have fallen into desuetude.
That is the only conspiracy.
Actually I do not use the word conspiracy. But it is used exceedingly often around here in the islamic context.(the muslims are taking over America!)
There is an Elitist class-- they do what comes naturally. Just like the muslims. They maintain a monopoly on information and ideas. And have been in a position to do so for quite some time.
For others interested in uncensored information go here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm
And here:http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/attitude.htm
It's interesting that the original source for Mr. Kocher's works is no longer accessible. I do expect them to eventually be purged from the web.
One has to keep in mind the enormous responsibility that Secretary Rice carries as the chief diplomatic representative of the worlds only super power. I think Secretary Rice knows very well and understands the inbread ideology of Islam throughout the world, she is by no means a dhimmi in anyway. Though I disagree with the comment that has been used by the President as well, that a great religion has been hijacked. The hijacked comment was actually given to the president by a Muslim who gave prayer in congress and was a member of CAIR and had the ear of the president.
I think if Secretary Rice was to make blanket statments that identified all muslims as being fully subscribe to the militant Tenets of Islam she would not be an effective speaker to the umma.
As to Secretary Rice not having the educational background for the job, most who know her background would say she is the most educated person to ever have a position in the Whitehouse cabinet.
Here is some of her education background.
In 1974, at age 19, Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver. In 1975, she obtained her master's degree from the University of Notre Dame. She first worked in the State Department in 1977, during the Carter administration, as an intern in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. In 1981, at age 26, she received her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. In addition to English, she speaks Russian, French, and Spanish.
At Stanford University, Rice is a tenured Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. From 1993 to July 1, 1999 she served as the Stanford Provost, the chief budget and academic officer of the university. After departing to enter government service, she returned to Stanford in June 2003 to deliver the commencement address.
Rice is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004.
Hugh-
Masterful. And hopefully already emailed -by someone who knows one of Rice's unofficial e-addresses- into her MUST READ in-box.
Kentim-
Sadly for their illusions, the global class of machiavellian power-lovers will discover that, under Sharia, they are either going to have to convert (and some would, since it as all "just a way to do business"... and the well-to-do can always scoff, like Saudi princes, at the naive orthodoxy... by flying to London for high priced hookers, cognac and skipping all that bowing 5 times a day stuff) or live in second class "people of the book" status (which most in the West could claim to be, in order to survive under an Islamic tyranny).
It is those in my circumstances, as a skeptic with mystical leanings (distilling parts of The Book of The Tao, The Tripitaka of the Buddha, The Sermon on the Mount, The Psalms and Proverbs, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Surviving Sayings of Heraclitus, Tom Paine, etc., etc.), who will suffer under a theocratic despotism.
So, unlike the 'swallowing a whale while straining for a gnat' class, like Rice -and Bush, I have to be FAR more realistic. My neck is on the block if Sharia gets a hold of me.
I can't afford the fatuous flapdoodle of the 'religion of peace' p.c. pabulum that they indulge in.
How I can find effective, enlightened representation is THE problem.
The realists are a rare as a petroleum engineer with a social conscience.
And politicians with a functioned backbone are as hard to find as a jellyfish who can tapdance.
P.S.-
for above, that's "functional backbone", of course.
(One of my favorite books is "Invertebrates", although I was disappointed to see no pictures of members of Congress included.)
Mackie:
I have met a few PHds I wouldn't pay to count paper clips.
What we don't know yet about Condie is whether what she is saying is only for public consumption and she her self knows the truth, how much influence the State Dept Arabists have on her or if she is a gormless idiot.
Being a fairly vocal proponent of invasion of Iraq, perhaps she's chosing to be very careful about what she says.
Rice is a protege of Czech immigrant Josef Korbel, a socialist governmental official who decided he did not like the Soviet brand and left. He is the father of Madeline Albright.
The history of Albright and Rice actually confirms the elitist power network. Rice is more or less a continuation of Albright.
By the way, bet nobody knew Exxon named a ship after Condoleeza. She has more than "intellectual' credencials;
Business career
Rice has served on the board of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She was also on the Board of Trustees of the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan, and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors.
Chevron honored Rice by naming an oil tanker Condoleezza Rice after her, but controversy led to its being renamed Altair Voyager [10] (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/04/05/MN222557.DTL), [11] (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/05/05/MN223743.DTL&type=printable). She also headed Chevron's committee on public policy until she resigned on January 15, 2001 to become National Security Advisor.
Rice has also been active in community affairs. She was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula.
In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleeza_Rice
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She's a Pragmatic Utopian.
Of course she's a CFR member too.
Put a c where I should have put a t: Credentials.
Hugh is right on again as usuall. I would just like to point out that Rice is just mouthing the George W. Bush line about Islam being " a great religion of peace " as he has repeatedly done clockwork every since Muslims killed thousands of American civilians on 9/11.
I shudder in fear what our President would have done had the Muslims killed say tens of thousands or millions of Americans. His response to 9/11 with his unaquivical indorsement of Islam has energized and calvanized muslims to redouble their efforts in the United States.
Rice's statements , as naieve and misleading as they are, just reflects the over all Bush position of promoting Islam at opportune points in time and location. For what ever reason he does this gets me to thinking along lines of a conspiracy it's self.
Muslims are trying to manipulate situations with in the broader class struggle and geo-political economic development in much the way say Christians did during the Colonial Era. But like the Christians they will find out that their agendas and dogmas will be eaten up and lost in the shuffle of that very same class struggle/ geo-political economic development.
So in that broader abeit Marxist interpatation of history and coming global trends , evolution of class struggle; Bush and Rice are not worried about the jihad. It will be eaten up by economic development or as they say ........FREEDOM. Or as a member of the ruling elite Bush is headging his bets with Islam to remain in a position of ruling power. Vis a vis foisting Islam on the population to lock in the control over the lower classes using Islam as a yoke of enslavement. As in where as christian/secular culture cannot control crime, drugs social disobediance lets give Islam a shot. Then we could have an impoverished workforce worrried only about conformity to a religious dogma and not trouble us with pesty concerns such as higher wages , healthcare and a quality education.....Islam eliminates the need for all of that! I am sure the ruling class finds such an option appealing to lock in and secure the social positions of their children and childrens children. The pro-Islamic sentiments of Bush and Rice may just be the vocal outlet for that ruling class desing to impose it's self on all of society. That may be what Billionare Osama Bin Laden is counting on to come out on top of this jihad thing. I am certin that is the angle that has kept him alive and fighting four years after 9/11. The stupid ass left can't see what a pawn of the ruling class Osama Bin Laden and global jihad really are.
Nossy
Never forget that the Phd's were 'in charge of national security' on September 11, 2001. Not exactly a stellar record.
It is a pompous, ivy-league conceit that someone like Condi can competently move from the cloistered academic life to master-of-the-world. Would they have us believe that a man could become a contender by studying boxing for several years in a good library?
Please. Give my a real counter-terrorism expert: someone who has killed a lot of people like Yasser Arafat - not someone who has studied people like him in a library.
Spare me the Phd bullshit - remember, I saw you sorry bastards in action on 911.
Evidently Sec. of State Rice got all here information from this article:
"Islam: a religion based on peace: Muslim students at USC discuss their faith, peace and common misconceptions as a group while informing others" by Tony Chiorazzi
http://www.dailytrojan.com/news/2005/04/06/Lifestyle/Islam.A.Religion.Based.On.Peace-913784.shtml
Daniel Pipes wrote about the above article:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/446
Weblog: The Very Worst Article on Islam? April 6, 2005
The Very Worst Article on Islam? Call me unfair for picking on a college journalist, but "Islam: a religion based on peace" by Tony Chiorazzi in UCLA's Daily Trojan today is my candidate for this prize. It has every platitude, inaccuracy, and banality in the book, from mistranslating the word Islam to getting the number of Muslims in the United States wrong to that hoary business about "A Muslim can't be a terrorist, and a terrorist can't be a Muslim." Readers are challenged to send me examples they find yet more egregious.
If we are not serious , we will get serious and because we are un-informed we will become informed .
It may take a few more disastrous attacks , but they will come , as sure as the sun rises . The islamic juggernaut is on the move ,and they're not playing games .
But in their overzealous ,hateful ,religious stupor , they discard any common sense of strategy, and that will be their downfall .
Just as the palestinians slaughter and bomb their way out of any progress and peace agreements , so too the muslim juggernauht is devoid of any intelligent strategy.
For they rely soley on a "Chamberlain-esque" false hope for peace on the part of the West .
But just as Hitler went on to invade Poland and thus open "total war " upon the world , islam will no doubt soon ,cross that imaginary line , on which the full retaliation of an awakened western civilisation will come .
Unfortnately we will pay with our blood for the complacency and illusions of a false hope , until such an awakening .
The Europeans are just now feeling the beginning winds on many small and "seemingly " insignifigant fronts .
I trust islam to make it undeniably clear , even to the doubting left and the elitist right , that this will be a battle for their [our ] very survival , else bow down a pray five times a day to their god .